


good help is so hard to find

by tnevmucric



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-06-07 06:03:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15212774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tnevmucric/pseuds/tnevmucric
Summary: remember what your mother told you





	good help is so hard to find

The creature had settled in my stomach on the eighteenth night of January, 2014. Almost thirty, I found myself as a rock between terror and dismay: unable to differentiate between the definition of a home and a place to sleep in. Presently, the man settles in front of me, setting my clammy palm on his leg as he unwound a roll of clean bandages. Nothing in the air around him could ever indicate an underlying, further intent that could ever come to harm another being. I still looked away.

"Unclench your jaw and relax your shoulders", Connor advised, beginning to swab at the fresh stream of coagulating blood on my knuckles. "Your anger would not be beneficial at this moment."

"I'm not angry", I replied, instinctively clenching my other hand as the peroxide began to eat away at stoic bacteria. 

"Does it hurt?"

"I'm fine."

"Lieutenant, that is not what I am asking", the bandages successfully cut off the blood flow in my hand but Connor looked somewhat pleased as he skillfully tied it off. "I know you are fine, you are often fine. I was asking if it hurt."

"What, when I fell from heaven?"

He lets my hand go and I take it back, tensing and re-tensing it to regain some colour. His eyes dig critically into mine and I sigh, breath coming out visibly amongst the falling snow.

"I'm okay, Connor. Really."

"What you did", Connor begins, gaze following it's natural path to the lake,"wasn't good."

It's an incredibly lackluster statement compared to the spew of intellect and correctness that usually leaves his artificially-perfected lips, but it coils somewhere in my ribs; snaking towards my heart with its familiar, blackening grasp. I squeeze my hands together as hard as I can, stray strands of my hair stinging my eyes and reminding me of my haircut next week. I was off my game today: I was weak. They tell you to always leave the emotional baggage outside before you step in but I wear it on my cheek.

"I know."

My mother's face reminded me of the many varying depictions of God; inconsistent, unpredictable, and unreliable. Like busts of Ancient Roman generals, they would oscillate between minacious, convincing demonstrations of power and fierce anger and contempt. I could please and satisfy her, but nothing could ever make that pleasure and satisfaction last. Praise was followed with something cutting, as though it was vital not to allow me an ego. I had learned to constantly read the house like a thermostat: _What was the mood today?  What did it have to do with me? If she is angry, what have I done to cause it?_

"This place", I begin familiarly, "I used to come here a lot before I got out of my mom's house."

The bench has never been comfortable. In fact, I believe that maybe it has retained its sole purpose of being a reminder at the unbearability of life just to _spite_ me. Connor doesn't mind it.

"I even wanted to get married in a place like this when I was younger", I admit. "Somewhere quiet, at nighttime where no one would be around. Just the snow and the cold."

"You've never said that before." Connor's voice adopts a gentle tone I imagine was archived into him somewhere alongside the words _interrogation_ and _manipulation_. It's comforting anyhow, and I shrug.

"Never saw the point in mentioning it."

"Why have you decided to mention it now?"

There is a second in which I lose my breath, each strip of it sucked away through my teeth and out into the all-consuming air. My nails dig into my sides and maybe, if I tried hard enough, I could gag out a Black Mamba hiding among the bile in my throat. I don't dare try.

"When I was 9, I was gang-raped, and I told nobody", I spat to the ground. "Who was there to tell when my own family had taken such a prize role in it?  What good would it have done? In the household I lived in, I had to learn to lie in my own special way to avoid getting hurt. I couldn't even tell a fucking lie to save my life, but I spoke so _sparingly_ that it was easy enough to learn what to _say_ and what _not_ to say. It was practically survival adaptation.  
  
"When I was about 14, I couldn't tell you where I lived or who I lived with even if I tried. I felt like I was one of those sad as fuck foster kids bouncing from house to house but I was just _stuck_ in the same house, with the same woman and barely-there father for _years_ until I got sent to boarding school. Later, when they were gone and I was going through the academy to become a cop, Fowler asked me why I called the dorm we shared 'home'. You wouldn't believe how much it fucked me over to _realise_ that they thought 'home' was where your family lived. _Hell_ was where my family lived — not even Hell, fucking _purgatory_. Home was just the place where I slept. Nothing more."

When I was young, I had no idea what snow was like. Books made it seem so soft and lovely, like pieces of the clouds above had decided to sprinkle icing sugar on us every December to make the holidays just an inch sweeter. I learnt quickly how wet and cold it was; how it felt all too much like burning embers inside of me.

"Today is the anniversary of your mother's death", Connor states, still watching the lake. "What do you feel for her now?"

"Nothing", I reply immediately. "Hate isn't the opposite of love, indifference is. And I'm indifferent to her fate. Being a mother was a contract: she takes care of me when I’m a child, and I do the same for her when she's old. She broke the contract, and I owe her nothing."

"Purgatory indicates a further reach for heaven", Connor's legs angle to face me and his body twists. I focus on the only similarities we have; a lack of breath and an abundance of life. "You called your household purgatory; do you wish them peace?"

My mouth goes dry. The creature in my stomach cries.

"I wish _myself_ peace."

I've never known if it was the eerie state all of the children's equipment remained in or if it was just the memories affiliated with the area, but the lake (and the bridge and the car park and the snow) have always felt like too many eyes all at once. Like every person who had ever been there was now watching and waiting for me to crack— now, I suppose, it was every person _plus one._

"I don't just feel pain", Connor states, twisting his fingers in his lap. "I feel everything. Textures, temperatures, thoughts. After I deviated, I thought it would just be an overwhelm of every emotion that had been suppressed through programming, but really-", the man beside me catches a snowflake on his fingertip. I watch it melt. "-really it was all physical. The emotions were already there, the thoughts were already there, I could use the basis of my knowledge on a texture and temperature to sate my need on knowing what it _actually_ felt like, but now..." He trails off, up until now unaware of the hand he has laid over my bandaged one. I turn it over and clasp his palm within my fingers.

"You have a whole fucking world inside of you, Connor", I say. "I'm not surprised."

For a brief moment, I can see both capable expressions of Connor's face at once, as if he had peeled off an exterior layer and held it up against the light, finding it just translucent enough to see through: similar to a sunset that always follows you home.

"You're afraid you have never been loved and that you never will be", Connor blurts, suddenly holding my hand back roughly, "that they'll leave you or hurt you like what has happened to you so many times before and you don't _ever_ give anyone the chance to try. But that is not love, Lieutenant. Love necessitates choice and I _will_ be here for you." Suddenly, the android takes his first breath. "Think of it as my contract."

43 years ago, I watch her spin snowflakes on her fingertips. Her lips are chapped and pink, covering her sharp and gravelly teeth. She grins, unexpectedly, and passes me one: but the water just melts on me. _Melt, my lover, melt_ , Siouxsie Sioux breathed from the stereo.  _Melt,_ I think now.


End file.
